Judge Rules Against RealDVD
A federal judge has ruled in favor of the six major movie studios suing RealNetworks over its RealDVD software.
RealNetworks was faced with legal action for the software the same day it was launched, on September 30 last year. While the company said that it was just trying to come up with a legal way for users to back up their movies to their hard drives, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel yesterday declared the program violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the terms of the DVD CSS license because RealNetworks actively worked to circumvent the CSS license, which is there to prevent casual users from the unauthorized copying of copyrighted materials recorded on DVD-Video/Audio Discs.
Patel issued a preliminary injunction preventing RealNetworks from selling the RealDVD software. The preliminary injunction replaces a temporary injunction that has been in place ever since major studios (including Paramount, Sony, Universal Studios and Walt Disney) filed suit last September.
Patel last year extended the temporary injunction because she was unsure as to whether the technology was a violation or not. "I am extending the temporary restraining order because I’m not satisfied in the fact that this technology is not in violation," Patel said following the three-hour hearing. "There are serious questions about copyright violations. There are questions about violations of the (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and violations of these companies’ agreement."
The ruling is unfortunate as it seems RealNetworks is genuine in its efforts to offer paying customers a way to watch movies they have paid for without the need for the DVD. That said, however genuine the company's efforts seem, RealNetworks did violate federal law. Who do you think is right in this instance? Let us know in the comments below.
Check out the full story here.
- RealNetworks ,
- RealDVD ,
- DRM ,
- CSS
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I think that the movie industry should come up with the software themselves. so that they may monitor it. In eithercase, I wish realdvd had won this one - if i can rip my mp3s legally, i should be able to do so with movies. point and case.
I think you should be able to rip dvd's. Alot of people have portable media players and can play them on the go without risk of damaging the disk, also people pay thousands for there collections only to have the disk ruined and unreadable by a kid leaving them out, dropping and scratching the disk
otherwise the film companies should be replacing disks free of charge, which are unreadable if we are unable to backup the disk for legitimate reason if they wish to block programs such as these.
Real deserves this simply for being the vendor that invented pointless bloatware!
If this is illegal, then all back ups of DVDs are illegal. I have about 300 of my DVDs ripped to HDD to save me having to look through them all. With HDD sizes increasing it doesn't make sense to have to insert media anymore.
Plus, when I put my DVDs in poorly designed slot loading DVD players, I'm glad I have a back up!
How is technology going to progress with idiot judges...